I am often shown ads for the New York Times even though we already have a subscription to the New York Times.  (I’m pretty sure that is not how targeted ads are supposed to work.)  Anyway, one of the recent ads linked to an article from 2016.  Odd choice except that I clicked on it.  (That is the way targeted ads are supposed to work.)

It was about the 13 questions I was supposed to ask Josh before we got married.  I’m going to be honest: it’s a little late for us.  We’re 16 years into this marriage thing.

I asked them anyway.

And then answered a bunch of questions for him because I’m nice like that and wanted to save him time.

They’re all good questions, and I think people should discuss everything on this list before they commit.  But as I was reading it, I thought about how you can’t really answer a bunch of these questions until you’re in the moment.  Like there are the answers you give from the sofa when you’re not in crisis because it’s how you think you’ll feel down the road.  And then you’re actually in a stressful situation and things change.  Suddenly it’s not a hypothetical, it’s an actual, and you need to live your words.

I guess because marriage isn’t neat.  Melding two lives isn’t neat.  I mean, it’s wonderful and I love Josh.  We’re about to celebrate our 16th anniversary, and I think we mostly have this marriage thing mastered.  It hasn’t felt like work, per se, but we’ve both made compromises.  It’s a little weird to let parts of yourself go in order to have others.

Maybe I also wish the questions weren’t quite so rosy.  (Will we have children? especially raised my eyebrows considering no possibility was listed for what happens if you can’t have children.)  I don’t know what I would add, but it would probably skew towards the worst case scenarios.  Not just so you could discover your partner’s thoughts, but because acknowledging those scenarios means that you can start formulating a plan.  Sometimes it’s just good to start thinking through the Plan B even when you’re hoping the Plan A works.

What would you add to their list?  Information you wish you had known before you committed?

I believe there has been a tear in the time-space continuum, creating an alternative timeline for my life.  I have proof.

Back on Halloween, I opened an old book and a piece of paper came out.  It had a name scrawled on it, sort of like I was writing myself a reminder to call the person.  Let’s change some facts around so this isn’t Google-able and make the name Dan Wumplemeyer.

“Dan Wumplemeyer,” I said aloud to Josh.  “How do I know the name Dan Wumplemeyer?”

He shrugged and continued watching television, but I was suddenly bothered by the name Dan Wumplemeyer.  It felt important.  So I Googled Dan and found his Facebook page.  We had many, many, many people in common, but the person didn’t look familiar at all.  The friends we had in common also weren’t related; it wasn’t as if I knew them all from one place.  Two people were from college and had moved to DC.  Another was from high school.  One was from a women’s group I belonged to when I first moved back to DC, and another was from a different women’s group that I joined when the first group fell apart.  Everyone else was a mishmash of people from various stages of my life.

I scrolled down through his pictures, and I started to see more people I knew but wasn’t friends with on Facebook.  Yet no other clues that let me know why I had a note to call Dan Wumplemeyer.

So I searched my email and found that he had been included on group emails I sent out after the twins were born.  Really intimate emails that were only sent to a close set of friends.  So at one time, I considered Dan Wumplemeyer a close friend… AND I HAD ZERO CLUE HOW I KNEW HIM.  There was nothing familiar about him; no memories tied to the person except a feeling that he had been present this one night my friend and I went to see Dave Eggers speak at a church.

Had he been dating my friend?  My brain told me that wasn’t correct — that my friend was single at the time because he had just broken up with his longtime boyfriend — but that was the only memory where Dan Wumplemeyer fit.  And he didn’t even fit well in that memory.  It was sort of like tossing a fork in with a bunch of spoons.

I went to bed and thought about Dan Wumplemeyer and the fact that I couldn’t place him.

Days passed and I had to search my email for something for work.  It pulled up the correct email, but it also pulled up other emails that contained the same keyword.  One of those emails was to an old childhood friend who… well… this is also a strange story.

At some point when the kids were little, we started going to a farm about 45 minutes away.  Why did we skip the 3000 farms between our house and this farm?  I don’t know.  But the farm owner had a hex on her barn that I loved.  When I asked about it, it turned out that my childhood friend had painted the hex!  It was a random connection — none of us lived close enough to one another to meet except by chance.  The farm owner reconnected me to this childhood friend — we’ll call her Dottie Stickelcake — and we had a few emails back and forth.

I was feeling nostalgic and decided to open Dottie’s email and re-read it before I went back to working.  In it we talked about the barn hex and various people we both knew.  And then, on the third email back and forth, I started talking about DAN WUMPLEMEYER!  I told her a story about Dan and mentioned that he had dated a man named Bernie Scratchbottom (also not his real name), who had gone to high school with us.

Who was Bernie Scratchbottom?  I had no memory of a Bernie Scratchbottom, even though Dottie and I exchanged two more emails with stories about Bernie.  I went and got my high school yearbook and looked up Bernie Scratchbottom.  There was no one at our school with that name.  I looked in older copies of the yearbook in case he wasn’t in my grade.  But there were no Bernie Scratchbottoms at our high school during any of the years I attended.  Though this random email exchange spoke about Bernie as if we hung out together all the time.

I mentioned all of this to the ChickieNob, mostly because I was worried that my memory was going until I hit this bizarre Bernie Scratchbottom snag.  She listened and then nodded seriously.  “Dan Wumplemeyer is probably a Key, just like Dawn in Buffy.”  I needed to read the Wikipedia entry to understand:

Characters accepted Dawn’s presence as if she had always been there, and as if Buffy always had a sister, with only the audience aware that this was not the case. As the series went on, the significance of Dawn’s arrival is revealed to the series’ other characters, and they come to understand that she has not always been Buffy’s sister, or indeed a sentient being; Dawn had originally been the mystical “key” to unlocking dimensions and was made into Buffy’s sister so the Slayer would protect her.

So Dan Wumplemeyer is unlocking other dimensions.

Makes total sense.

The coda to this story is that as I wrote this entry, I decided to Google and see if the farm was still there since it has been at least 10 years since I last visited.  It is, but even more bizarre, the front of the farm site has a note about our handyman.  (Remember, this farm is about 45 minutes from our home.)  He is apparently the brother of the farm owner, and she put up a little ad for his services even though he lives in my town and not hers.  This is just like Dirk Gently.

Everything is connected.  Even Dan Wumplemeyer and me.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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The BBC had an article about a little while back about the cultural interpretations of silence.  English speakers tend to panic when there is silence, whereas speakers of other languages see it “as a valuable moment of reflection and a sign of respect for what the last speaker has said.”

As I read it, I realized how much I like silence.  I don’t like waiting for an answer any more than the next person but I like sitting with people in silence.  I especially like driving in silence.  And pauses in conversation are nice because they’re like a period at the end of a thought.

Are you comfortable with silence?  How long would you let a pause go on in a conversation before you felt the need to fill it?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

I went to see a performance of Our Town.  Even though I’ve seen the play many times, I still started sniffling when George and Emily went out for the ice cream sodas.  And I was full-out wailing by the time we got to the cemetery.

I know some people think Our Town is maudlin and others think it’s obvious, but the former has no heart and the latter has no sense.  “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?”  I am typing this post and this moment holds no weight because I have no clue what will happen next.  That is what makes life so heartbreaking; that we have no way of really absorbing life.  That most minutes bounce off our skin like oil meeting vinegar.  How many times on a normal day do you tell yourself to take a moment to marvel at the world around you?  I can tell you how many times I do that every day.  Zero.  Because Emily is right: humans are blind.

When we got home, I heard ChickieNob speaking in the kitchen with Josh.  “It was so loud.  I looked over because I thought dozens of people were crying.  But it was just mum.”

Because it’s that sad.

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I got what just may be the coolest surprise gift ever.  I went to get the mail and there was a package.  I was expecting a small envelope with a thumb drive for work, but this was a huge box.  And it had a scary picture on the cardboard.

But I opened it because I’m not that bright, and it turned out to be the coolest littleBits set!  It’s their new Code Kit.  You can build the project using the littleBits and then program it using a drag-and-drop, Blockly-like coding language.  It transmits the program wirelessly from the computer to the project.

I haven’t gotten a chance to build anything yet because the twins stole the box from me.  But I’m totally going to build Linus his very own electronic guinea pig friend with a LED face!  Because that won’t freak out my guinea pig at all.  Though I suppose I should do something more productive with it like take it to our coding club and have the kids get to try it out.  But first, an electronic guinea pig!

I don’t like the sound of this at all

Thank you, littleBits!

(1) I need a vegan brownie recipe.  Actually, it doesn’t have to be vegan, per se, but it cannot contain eggs.  My friend and I are in a bake-off, and her daughter is the judge.  This give her an unfair home field advantage, so I am using my blog to gather recipes.  The prize is apparently a million hugs, so I’m thinking I may lose this one by default.  But still, I’m fighting hard.  Send me your best vegan brownie recipes.  And if you’ve ever perfected a vegan chocolate chip cookie, I’ll take that, too.

(2) I also need gluten-free cookie recipes for cookies that travel well.  Again, trying to charm a gluten-free child with baked goods, and while I’ll be dropping off some cookies face-to-face in a few weeks, I also need to be able to mail batches if she falls in love with any of them.

So send me good recipes that you’ve made and help me win.  Because everyone deserves a good cookie, no?

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “#MicroblogMondays: Flip” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “The Return” (Baby Smiling in Back Seat)
• “Me Too” (Bent Not Broken)
• “Don’t Stop Believing” (Genuine Greavu)
• “Time Famine” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Cristy!

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Road Less Travelled has a post about the misery filter, discussing a recent column in the New York Times.  She writes, “I agree that an emphasis on relentless optimism and the carefully curated images we see on social media contribute to the shock — & shame — that we feel when something goes wrong in our lives (as it inevitably does, at some point).”  It’s a fascinating look at an “education for suffering.”  Go over and join the conversation.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a beautiful post about unsilencing yourself and speaking about your struggles.  She speaks about it on the personal level — the act of unburdening your heart by letting others in — but also on a more collective scale.  She writes about infertility: “It’s because a brave few started all of this by coming out of the infertility closet, shameless sharing their stories. And those few grew to many more, empowering many more to do the same. And though infertility and pregnancy loss are still taboo, particularly if you don’t resolve by parenting, the truth is there are more much needed conversations that are happening. The unsilencing has lead to awareness.“  Here’s to sharing your story.

Torthúil writes about hosting a birthday party, and it’s (1) an awesome accomplishment and (2) a fascinating behind-the-scenes reminder of what you may not know about a person.  That people generally have their reasons for why they do what they do, even if they don’t share them with you.  (But thank you, Torthúil, for sharing the reasons with us.)  Aaaaand, if you’ve ever struggled with planning a party, she gives you an easy template to follow.  Win!

Lastly, Anabegins talks about letting silence flood back into her brain.  Until I read this post, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I’m really behind on podcasts because I’ve been driving around in silence for the last few weeks.  So, yeah, turning off podcasts sometimes clears your brain.  But this is the brilliant part: “So I decided to reinstate quiet into my commute and the blank space is back! Plus I get to save up the podcasts to add some joy to the truly uninspiring moments of life, like laundry-folding and kitchen-cleaning.”  Yes, that’s where I’m going to fit podcasts back in, too.

The roundup to the Roundup: Give me egg-free and/or gluten-free baking recipes.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between October 27th and November 3rd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.